Leadership Public Schools: Board of Trustees

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Board of Trustees

Please scroll down to view our board meeting agendas.

Leadership Public Schools incorporated in 2002. Our board is comprised of our CEO, teacher, student, and parent representatives, and several volunteer community members. Each Leadership School will also be represented by a Site Council comprised of parents and community members.

Anthony J. Alvarado

Mr. Alvarado is a nationally recognized leader with over 30 years experience in educational reform. He has worked as a classroom teacher, principal, superintendent, and Chancellor in the New York City Public Schools and Chancellor of Instruction in San Diego Unified School District. Mr. Alvarado was named New York State Superintendent of the Year and awarded the prestigious Charles Dana Award for pioneering achievement in education. He has served on the Board of Trustees for the Educational Testing Service, the Education Policy Advisory Committee for Governor Elect Eliot Spitzer, the National Academy of Education, the Board of Trustees for the Albert Shanker Institute, the Advisory Commission for the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, and the California Post Secondary Education Commission.

Helen Bellamy, Parent Member

Ms. Bellamy is the mother of Auzerais Bellamy, and Abayomi Bellamy both students at LPS Hayward. Ms. Bellamy completed law school this year, earning her JD degree. She currently provides self-help law related services directly to the public as a Legal Document Assistant, her company is Judicial Self Help Center, Hayward, CA. Her family also operates the extremely popular restaurants Everett & Jones Barbeque, with branches throughout the Bay Area.

Richard Cohn

Mr. Cohn provides consulting services in public relations, public affairs, and employee communications. He served in senior corporate communications positions at Charles Schwab, Sun Microsystems, and PG&E. He is an innovative strategist and hands-on leader of communications teams, helping Fortune 500 firms and startups launch new strategic directions, deploy new communications technologies, and navigate crises with intense media scrutiny. His communications work has been recognized with awards from the Public Relations Society of America and the International Association of Business Communicators. Mr. Cohn's broad background also includes co-founding a company developing transactional, Internet-based markets for business-to-business e-commerce, serving as a senior attorney in the U.S. Department of Energy, and working as a legislative assistant in the U.S. House of Representatives. Mr. Cohn received a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and a JD from Emory University. He serves on the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Giants Community Fund and is a member of the Secondary Schools Committee of the University of Pennsylvania and the Alexis de Tocqueville Society of the United Way of the Bay Area. He lives in San Rafael with his wife Anne Wilson and their two children.

Sandy Dean, Board Treasurer

Mr. Dean is a founding member of Sansome Partners, a direct investment firm in San Francisco. Mr. Dean has been with Sansome for 10 years, and has been involved with a variety of private and public equity investments. Mr. Dean currently serves as the Chairman of Mendocino Redwood Co LLC, the largest FSC certified operator of redwood timberlands in California. Mr. Dean has an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from Duke University, and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Mr. Dean has previously served on the board of the Bay Area Discovery Museum.

Mitiu Fagbayi

Mutiu Fagbayi Founder, President & CEO of Performace Fact. He has extensive background facilitating and coaching educational leaders and their teams at the national, state, and local levels. His areas of focus include strategic planning and school improvement; creating and sustaining high-performing learning organizations; implementing accountability systems; developing leadership at all levels; and building trust.

Jeff Faucette

Mr. Faucette is a director in the Litigation Department at law firm of Howard Rice. He is a member of the firm’s Intellectual Property Practice Group and serves on the firm’s Technology Committee. Since joining Howard Rice in 1997, Mr. Faucette has developed an active commercial litigation practice involving all aspects of trial and appellate litigation in California state courts and federal courts throughout the United States. He represents companies such as the Major League Baseball Properties Inc. and Hewlett Packard. Prior to arriving at Howard Rice, Mr. Faucette was a law clerk for the Honorable Sven Erik Holmes of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma, located in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He worked in Washington, D.C., where he was engaged in opinion research at Peter D. Hart Research Associates and as the Press Assistant for the Armed Services Committee of the House of Representatives (Chairman Les Aspin). Mr. Faucette holds a Juris Doctorate from Duke University School of Law and a B.A. in political science from Stanford University. He is a member of the American Bar Association, Bar Association of San Francisco and the State Bar of California.

Laura Fisher, Board Secretary

Ms. Fisher graduated from Stanford University with a BA in Economics in ’88. After graduation, she worked in marketing and communications for GolinHarris and then McDonald’s Corporation in Chicago. She has served as board chair of The Breakthrough Collaborative, a board member of the Bay Area Discovery Museum and San Francisco Day School. She currently serves on the board of Urban High School, Steppingstone Foundation and the Stanford University School of Education advisory committee.

Greg Garcia

Mr. Garcia is a founding member of the LPS San José staff and the staff sponsor of the LPS Martial Arts Club. He has a BA in philosophy from San Jose State University, and AA degrees in sociology and liberal arts from West Valley College. In addition to teaching English and PE at LPS San José, Mr. Garcia also teaches in the Department of Kinesiology at SJSU. He is also a graduate student in the SJSU Philosophy Department and a proud member of the Phi Kappa Phi honor society. Mr. Garcia is a 5th degree black belt and brings over 20 years of martial arts teaching and business experience into the classroom. His classroom style blends academic rigor, professional expectations, and elements of ‘mental martial arts', particularly the ideals of respect, self-control, integrity, perseverance, lifelong learning, and the perpetual quest for excellence in life.
An avid Star Wars fan, Mr. Garcia is fond of quoting Master Yoda in class, especially because “much to learn he still has”, and occasionally the simple wisdom of the diminutive Jedi Master brings the complexities of young life into focus.

Heather Hiles

Ms. Hiles is Partner and National Director, Foundation Division of IFF Advisors LLC, a firm that provides strategic and operational support to a wide range of foundations, family enterprises, corporations, public agencies and nonprofit organizations. Prior to joining IFF she was President of The Hiles Group LLC, a philanthropic consulting firm. Ms. Hiles was the first CEO of San Francisco Works, a nationally recognized public-private workforce development intermediary, and a co-founder of EARN, a city-wide asset accumulation and economic development program for low-income families. Prior to SFWorks she created and ran the Affluent Market Practice for Spectrem Group, a financial services consulting firm. Her early career was spent in direct service and program management with educational programs serving low-income teens and families in the Bay Area. Ms. Hiles served as a Commissioner of the San Francisco Board of Education and a member of the San Francisco Workforce Investment Board. In 2003 she was Communications Director for the Gavin Newsom for Mayor Campaign. She holds a MBA with emphasis in Finance and Strategic Planning from Yale University School of Management, and a BA in Development Studies and Ethnic Studies from the University of California at Berkeley.

Henrik Jones

Henrik Jones is a Principal at Hall Capital Partners LLC and the Head of the Real Assets Group, which focuses on investments in real estate, energy, timber and other tangible assets.

Mr. Jones joined Offit Hall Capital Management LLC (predecessor to Hall Capital Partners LLC) in May of 2001. From 1984 to 1989, Mr. Jones was a corporate banker at J.P. Morgan & Co. in New York in the Commodities Department and then a Vice President in Media Corporate Finance. He was a Summer Associate at Fidelity Capital, the venture capital group within Fidelity Investments (FMR Corp.) in 1990. After achieving an MBA, he worked in general management for ten years. First, he was a Partner of InterMedia, a cable television operator funded with private equity. Then he co-founded and was Chief Executive Officer of Answers.com, currently listed as "ANSW" on the NASDAQ. Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Jones was Chief Executive Officer of FFBP Inc., a florist doing business as B. Brooks Fine Flowers. Mr. Jones serves on the Advisory Boards of FIA Timber Partners (Fund I), Broadreach Capital Partners (BRCP Realty I, LP and BRCP Realty II, LP), GMO Forestry Fund VIII, Investment Committee of Gateway High School, Leadership Public Schools and FFBP, Inc. He previously served on the the Editorial Board of The Institutional Real Estate Letter and 150 Parker School Board. Mr. Jones graduated from Brown University in 1983 with an A.B. and received an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1991.

Mark Kushner-Founder, J.D., Ed. M

Mark founded and was the initial CEO of LPS from 2002-2008. A former attorney, high school English teacher and Principal, he previously founded the first urban startup charter high school in California, which has one of the highest graduation rates for African Americans and Latinos in the state. He founded and continues to serve as a member of the California Advisory Commission on Charter Schools, which advises the California State Board of Education on all charter matters. He teaches a course on School Choice at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business and School of Education, and continues to serve on a number of nonprofit boards, including the boards of San Francisco University High School and the Town School for Boys. Education honors include the Harvard Club of San Francisco's Secondary School Educator of the Year and the Hart Vision Award for School Site Administrator, the highest award given to charter school educators in California. Mr. Kushner received a B.A. from Wesleyan University and completed graduate work in literature, law and educational administration at the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (affiliated with Keble College, Oxford University), University of San Francisco (J.D.) and Harvard University (Ed.M.). He is married to Dr. Mimi Winsberg and has two children.

JR Matthews

Mr. Matthews is a Managing Director of Tregaron Capital, a Palo Alto based private investment firm. He currently sits on the board of directors of HR Plus, Glowtouch, an Indian Outsourcing company, and PIU Management. He is a current member of the Alliance of Chief Executives and a former member of Young Presidents Organization (YPO). His previous work experience includes 10 years as Chief Executive Officer of a group of wholesale, retail and real estate companies with more than 300 employees. Matthews received a BSE in Electrical Engineering from Duke University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Scott Pearson, Board Chair

Mr. Pearson is active in community and philanthropic activities related to children both in the US and in Central America. In addition to his passionate commitment to LPS, Mr. Pearson chairs the Bay Area Discovery Museum Board and serves on the boards of the Breakthrough Collaborative and the Marin Horizon School. Mr. Pearson was formerly Vice President for Corporate Development at America Online. Prior to this he served as a trade negotiator for the United States Government under the Clinton administration, and as a management consultant with Bain and Company. Mr. Pearson holds a Bachelors degree from Wesleyan University, a Masters degree in Business Administration from Harvard Business School, and a Masters degree in Public Administration from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is married with two children.

John R. Selby

Mr. Selby co-founded Clarium Capital Management, a macro hedge fund based in San Francisco. Mr. Selby was previously a company Director and Senior Vice President at PayPal, Inc. and Vice President at GFTA Analytics GmbH, a Düsseldorf-based financial consulting company. Mr. Selby earned a BA degree in Economics from Hamilton College.

Deborah J. Stipek, Ph.D.

Deborah J. Stipek, Ph.D. is the James Quillen Dean and Professor of Education at Stanford University. Ms. Stipek's doctorate is from Yale University in developmental psychology. Her scholarship concerns instructional effects on children’s achievement motivation, early childhood education, elementary education and school reform. In addition to her scholarship, Ms. Stipek served for five years on the Board on Children, Youth, and Families of the National Academy of Sciences and chaired the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Increasing High School Students’ Engagement & Motivation to Learn. Dr. Stipek served 10 of her 23 years at UCLA as Director of the Corinne Seeds University Elementary School and the Urban Education Studies Center. She joined the Stanford School of Education as Dean and Professor of Education in January 2001. She is a member of the National Academy of Education.

Alex Terman

Alex Terman is Chief Business Officer of the Stupski Foundation, an operating foundation focused on improving the performance of urban school districts. Previously, he was a founding staff member and Chief Operating Officer of Leadership Public Schools from 2002 to 2007. Prior to joining LPS, Mr. Terman spent four years working in business and corporate development at America Online and as an Associate Consultant at Bain & Company, an international management consulting firm. Mr. Terman has served as a John Gardner Fellow in the Office of the United States Trade Representative and as a board member and classroom volunteer for Junior Achievement of the Bay Area, and currently serves as Board Treasurer for Rocketship Education, a charter management organization. He completed the Broad Residency in Urban Education, a two-year management development program that trains emerging leaders for senior management positions in public education. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in History from the University of California , Berkeley and a Masters of Business Administration from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Judy Wade, Board Vice-Chair

Ms. Wade is a partner of McKinsey & Company. She has focused primarily on helping clients with major operational and organizational transformations, often in complex public sector environments and where there are large front-line workforces. Ms. Wade is a leader of the North American Operational Practice, and the firm’s Public Sector/Non-Profit Practice. She has led public sector efforts for the New York City Schools, the Guateng (South Africa) Department of Education, National Business Initiative’s (South Africa) educational business planning program for schools in previously disadvantaged communities, and the South African Police Service, among others. Ms. Wade served on the board of Business Against Crime in South Africa, and currently serves on the boards of Technoserve and the University of California, Berkeley’s College of Letters and Science. Prior to joining McKinsey, Ms. Wade worked as a research associate for Hambrecht & Quist, Inc., an investment bank in San Francisco, and for Anthem Electronics, an electronics distributor. She has a B.A. in economics from University of California, Berkeley and a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Dr. Louise Waters, Board President

Louise Waters is the Superintendent and CEO of Leadership Public Schools. Dr. Waters comes to LPS from the Stupski Foundation where she headed research on districts that have accelerated the performance of students of color and poverty. Her work at Stupski built off of her experience in the Oakland Unified School District. As Associate Superintendent of Student Achievement in Oakland, Dr. Waters led the instructional reforms from 2001 – 2004 that resulted in district achievement gains that out-paced the State. She was also responsible for Oakland’s exit from two long-standing Office of Civil Rights oversight decrees related to bilingual education and disparate academic opportunities for African American students. As a principal in the New Haven district (Union City), she designed award-winning assessment and extended day programs. Prior to her career in district administration, Dr. Waters led the state’s first new teacher program, a partnership between Oakland and the California State University, East Bay. As a professor of Teacher Education at the university, she was head of a number of urban teacher preparation programs.

Joanne Weiss

Ms. Weiss is Partner and COO at NewSchools Venture Fund, where she focuses on investments and management assistance for a variety of the firm's portfolio ventures, and oversees the organization's operations. As part of this work, she serves on several boards in addition to Leadership's, including Aspire Public Schools, Education for Change, Green Dot Public Schools, New Leaders for New Schools, Revolution Foods, Rocketship Education, and Teachscape. Prior to joining NewSchools, Ms. Weiss was CEO of Claria Corporation, an e-services recruiting firm that helped emerging-growth companies build their teams quickly and well. She previously spent twenty years in the design, development, and marketing of technology-based products and services for education. She was co-founder, interim CEO, and Vice President of Products and Technologies at Academic Systems, a company that helped under-prepared college students succeed in mathematics and writing. Prior to that, she was Executive Vice President of Business Operations at Wasatch Education Systems, where she led the product development, customer service, and operations organizations for this K-12 educational technology company. She began her career as Vice President of Education R&D at Wicat Systems, where she was responsible for the development of nearly 100 multimedia curriculum products for K-12 schools. Ms. Weiss has a passion for education, and has spent much of her career pioneering innovative ways of using technology to increase the effectiveness of teaching and learning processes. She holds a degree in biochemistry from Princeton University.